But here I am anyway, in the CVS on Perkins and Sixteenth, allowing her to turn me criminal. Like this. Don’t be, like, obvious. See? When she slides a lipstick into her palm, it’s so delicate, you’d think she was lifting a bird. At the counter, three Maybelline...
You’re standing with toes far back from the edge, not prepared for a swim that night in Otsego when he sneaks up behind and throws you in from the dock, not out, but off to the side where it’s too shallow. You slice both heels on the zebra mussels, squat-swim to the...
1st: Place: Party in the O.R. by Lannie Stabile Runner-Up: Through the Window by Susan Wigmore Runner-Up: Be Prepared by JR Walsh Shortlisted Titles and Writers sea hungry by Alvin Park Exotic by Ina Roy-Faderman Spit Joined by Tom Weller Unwound by Tiffany Grimes If...
We were always driving and once in the night in the dark after hours and hours, days even of only night driving, you said to me. We’ve gone a thousand miles. We could have gone to New York by now. We could have gone anywhere. You said it in the dark. It was Cedar...
Caterpillar Killer by Shastri AkellaDirty Shirley by Shannon BowringGiving Up by Catherine CadePicking Up Stones by Brad ClompusIn the Closet by Grace ElliottWays of Karst by Jamie EtheridgeSea Bugs by Amanda HadlockEndless Spoonful by Susie HaraCharlotte Sometimes by...
Super fast and super premium. We wished that were true about the greyscale beat of our lives. Its expectations a stone in our gullets. When we died, one by one by glorious one, we were not prepared for these things, as we were only girls. Not before, and certainly not...
I’d have bet prison, fifteen to life for offing your ex while he slept next to the younger blonde who’d stolen your crown. Or maybe the roller derby, skating endless, sweaty circles alongside women nicknamed Glory Hole and Cuntalingus, girls who’d sharpened their...
Faye says she doesn’t believe in coincidence, but the day she burns the last of the cows, two women hurl themselves from dizzying heights like deadweight dropped into the sea. In the autumnal air, clotted yellow with ash, Faye claims a sudden lightness—a tug of going...
After Edgar Degas’ “Dance Rehearsal, 1874” People say ballet theaters are haunted by the dancers who died tragically young, but that’s not true. Theaters are haunted by bored ghost girls. They’ve spooked everyone worth spooking. Wandered Paris, Rome, Tokyo. Lasted...
When we were fourteen, Tessa, Gina, and I used to laugh at Mrs. Meade, our history teacher, who always came to class like she had dressed in a rush, her hair always boringly tied, her wedding finger always covered in soap, stuck to her wedding band and we wondered how...
I wished it on my 16th birthday candles. The school counselor said to believe in myself, so I did. It turned out the junior class at Bellingham High had been waiting for a teenage vampire. First they stopped sitting with me at lunch. Jesse from homeroom said they...
She has a small scar behind her left earlobe and I wonder if she knows that I’m aware of it. I’ve always wondered how it became to be and I used to make up stories in my head. Stories involving nipping puppies, or a renegade fishing pole cast when she was 13. Then...